Saturday, December 9, 2017

Christmas
and the winter solstice is traditionally a magical time in all three of the
Baltic countries, and nowhere is this magic more evident than in the natural
world and the Baltic customs surrounding animals.

The
Deer Mother (who represented the “life-giving-mother-deity”) was a center
figure in Winter solstice celebrations in ancient and primitive cultures; she flew
across the earth on the longest, darkest day of the year carrying the sun
within her antlers to usher in the return of the sun and resume the fertility
of the land. In Lithuania, the Devyniaragis
(a white deer with nine antler points) carried the sun and moon within its
antlers. Read more about Lithuanian
traditions in Daiva Venckus’s post from last year’s series!

In
ancient Latvia, Ziemassvētki celebrated the rebirth of the Sun Maiden. Traditional
celebrations included participating in ķekatas
(also known as budēļi & kaļadas, similar to mumming), when people
dressed up costumes and went from house to house singing, dancing, and playing
games. The traditional costumes varied, but popular choices were animals such
as a horse, bear or crane. The ķekatas are
believed to bring luck to the households that they visit, scaring away evil
spirits in the process with the loud singing and carousing, and are warmly
welcomed with food and drink. More on the budeļi
tradition in Imanta’s post A Baltic Christmas Day 4 – Čigāni!

The
Lithuanian winter solstice celebrations also included many superstitions
concerning animals. For example, sprinkling wheat and peas in the barn was
thought to ensure the health of your animals, while taking all the milk pots
outside and placing around the farmstead after dinner was so that the cows
would give more milk in the next year. If
you want your horses to be good looking, steal manure from your neighbor and
feed it to your horses, and to keep wolves from carrying away animals, mention
wolves while eating.

There
are a couple of traditions that some people still follow, such as taking
Christmas bread to domestic animals in the barn and hay to the forest animals. In
Lithuania, much attention was paid to the animals on Christmas Eve, as their
health and fertility depended on it. However,
be careful not to stay in the barn too long… In Latvia and Lithuania, animals
were believed to gain the ability to speak like humans at midnight on Christmas
Eve. This is a widespread superstition throughout Europe, and although in
some cases the animals use this gift to help humans, in most cases overhearing
the animals is bad luck. For Latvians it wasn’t only the animals that gained
human characteristics; Christmas Night in the Kitchen by Margarita Stāraste
Barvika tells the tale of everyday objects coming to life in addition to the old Dachshund gaining the power of speech.

Fortune
telling was an important part of the winter solstice celebrations. An old
Latvian superstition states that if you carried a black cat around the church
on Christmas Eve, you would be rich. Concerning marriage in the upcoming year,
the windows would be covered after supper, and a rooster and hen were pulled
out from under the stove and tied together by the tails. Superstition said that
if the rooster pulls the hen to the door, there will be a wedding; however if
he pulls the hen back under the stove, there will not be a wedding that year.

In
Estonia, fortune telling also often involved the animals. For example, the
chances of a young woman getting married were predicted by giving corn to
roosters; the rooster was then observed to see which grain it would eat first. Tradition
also dictated that domestic animals in the barn were offered bread on Christmas
Eve. And during the holidays, noisy activities such as horse-driving were not
allowed, because they could disturb the good ghosts.

The magic
of Christmas Eve also extended to the insects. Lithuanian tradition was for the
beekeeper to take honey and bees to his poor neighbors, and so that bees would
not swarm on Christmas Eve night, the beekeeper took the first harvest grain
sheaf around the orchard. Meanwhile the Latvian custom involved going to a
neighbor’s barn to shear a sheep, and placing that wool in the hives; this was
thought to guarantee the health of the bees.

Many of these old traditions were incorporated into new ones with the advent of
Christianity, and although we are not tying the tails of roosters and hens
together to reveal the chances of a wedding in the upcoming year, you will find
customs such as budeļi and extra care
of animals around the holidays still practiced. A century ago, the trip to
church was by horse-drawn sleigh accompanied by the jingling of tiny bells on
the horse’s harness. Although these days the ride is more often in a vehicle,
the jingling of those bells can still be heard on the wind on a magic Baltic
Christmas Eve.